I've seen that before too but I've always chalked it up to lazy people mixing colour temperatures.

Commercial places with full T12 lighting is super rare here but I've seen the occasional one tucked away in a cove light or a stairwell. Recessed mercury cans are somewhat common though but most I've seen are dimmed out.

Hmm. Can'y they still get CWP lamps? They still sell CWP lamps at any store i go to selling T12s.

They probably can but I guess the guy used whatever was on his truck.

Now, 4100K F14T5s are just impossible to find.

F14T5? I never knew those existed.

the F14T5 is the modern 2' T5 lamp. here T12s are still sold but they come with new phosphors in certain sizes to comply with doe standards. are mercury ballasts still sold in canada?

I think Joe said the only MV ballasts are those 175W chinese yardblasters. They have probe Mh ballasts but most places don't use them for new installations anyways, which prves we didn't need the ban in the US in the first place. If our friends to the north can pick the more efficicent source of light on their own without gov'nt interference, who's to say we can't? Though they say we're not as smart as we used to be education wise lol.

Yeah I think they still sell some merc fixtures here, I found a 175w, 250w, and a 400w merc bracket light still listed.

It seems Mexico still has the full range of mercury ballasts for sale though. When did probe start stuff get banned anyways? I'm sure the full range of probe start ballasts are still sold here though.

I guess they never really did ban MV here since most towns were already fully HPS by the mid 90s so there never really was a need to "persuade" people to change stuff. T12 ballasts did get banned though since they decided to ban them just because they were banned in the US. In fact they mentioned this on their site.

"The advancement of technology has made it possible to significantly increase the energy efficiency of these lamps and the implementation of these new requirements has the potential to significantly reduce energy consumption nationwide. Harmonizing with the US on these regulations will benefit both the economy and the environment and help Canada to meet its energy efficiency goals. Harmonization also eliminates the potential of manufacturers selling products in Canada that they could not otherwise sell in the US."

they banned probe start fixtures here with the same bill that banned MV ballasts and fixtures. They haven't banned new replacement ballasts for MH though.

There's no mention of probe start fixtures being banned in Canada so I guess they're still being made here.

we still replace probe start ballasts with probe start, ive noticed the new lamps are junk especially the wierd shaped GE MVR175/U
the pulse start ballasts get replaced more becuase the ignitor fails

Yeah on lighting websites it says for Probe MH "for export only, not for sale in US" Oh those GE MH lamps are CRAP! Sylvania and even Philips MH lamps are good. Cermaic MH lamps i think are made best by Philips though to be honest. Their MH-PSMH-CMH lamps are not Alto lamps and i find any non-alto Philips lamps are pretty decent. Their pre-alto linear fluorescents are warriors. those things were great. Too bad everything is low mercury now with fluorescent.

Yeah, I heard the odd shaped GE MHs are junk. Personally I like Sylvania's MH lamps since they still use the classic BT shape for them. Philips's CMH lamps are pretty nice too, I have a 70w clear 4000K one in my R47.

The Alto T8s were ok but the Alto IIs seem to start up a bit dim and give that mercury starved look. I heard the T12 Alto Econ-o-watt line was the worst lol.

I think Sylvania F40T12/CWP lamps are still full mercury along with a lot of their other T12 lamps. I think the specialty Philips fluorescent lamps are still full mercury too.

The early Alto II T8s were awful but I heard the newer ones are much better. My pair of Alto IIs doesn't seem bad at all but i've only used them a few times and not for long.Yeah all the Sylvania F40/CWP lamps i've dealt with have been great except for the pair i own lol. They always atart off dim and flickery in the center and slowly warm up and it is SOO annoying! The CWP altos and other Sylvania CWP lamps i've installed have done that when turned on for the evry first time but after that they're fine. My pair seems to be stuck in that "first time beeing powered" state. I've heard leaving them in the sun or using a hair dryer or other source of heat can stop this behavior becuase it lets mercury out of the phosphors?

Hmm, I never had that problem with the CWP lamps but I guess burning them in by running them continuously for a few hours might help.

T8 Alto II on a magnetic RS ballast was the worst, dim and flickering for the first few minutes.

Is this the same store that now has recessed slimlines?